How artificial intelligence is shaping our future

Can I still wear an oversized watch?

The Buchinger Wilhelmi clinic's fasting programme will change your life

Buchinger Wilhelmi clinic in Germany specialises in therapeutic fasting, detox and all forms of wellness. Theatrical producer Nick Allott, part of the team that brought Hamilton to the London stage, went there to find out if it works

When the scales touched 17 stone I decided to do something about it. From a fighting weight of 14 stone, having given up fags and some other, ahem, slimming aspects of the party life, I watched the dial creep upwards over the next two decades until, as Clive James said, “I woke up a fat man.”

For the next five years I explored iterations of the famous Mayr clinics starting with the Original Golf Hotel, which was bit like going on a Seventies skiing holiday but with stricter chalet girls and no food. The newer ones are John Pawson-style minimalist temples to health with new branches springing up everywhere to keep pace with growing demand. I would have rebooked for one this February – it’s always February, a rubbish month when the shooting season is over and my beloved Chelsea start wobbling and sacking managers – but then a friend introduced me to the avuncular and glowing Raimund Wilhelmi, the third-generation owner of the family-run Buchinger pair of clinics. He persuaded me over breakfast that the fasting programme they advocate is a radical alternative to the better-known Mayr programme and so I switched.

Advertisement

I chose the original Buchinger Wilhelmi clinic in Überlingen on the edge of Lake Constance in Southern Germany over their younger branch in Marbella, to avoid any sense of sunny holiday lotus eating. It’s 90 minutes drive from Zurich (barely slowing as we passed over the border into Germany reminding one of at least one advantage of EEC membership). The clinic itself is quite boxy, but all the compact rooms look over Lake Constance, which straddles three countries. The newer pavilions further down in the extensive gardens house a gym, treatment rooms, meditation areas and a beauty parlour. Built in 1953 (the Marbella branch opened 30 years later) it is currently undergoing extensive refurbishment to include air-conditioning and some new larger bedrooms.

Fasting is as old as history and is an integral part of most religions. It’s surprising, given that the 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness is one of the earliest references, that it is not a recognised part of contemporary Christianity. The Buchinger programme was developed by the current owner’s grandfather, Otto, a naval doctor wheelchair-bound by rheumatism and invalided out of the German navy in the First World War. After all conventional medicine failed to provide him relief, he fasted for three weeks, only drinking water. At the end, his symptoms eased to the point where he resumed a normal life, dedicating himself to this new and, at the time, controversial treatment. He died a healthy man in his eighties. His family continue his work to this day with his great-grandsons about to take over the running of both clinics.

Read next

10 coolest things to do in London this week

This is how you should be spending your time this week...

ByAnna Gordon

The science of fasting is complicated, but the principles are simple. When you reduce your calorific intake to a bare minimum your body starts first to consume the glucose that your normal diet provides for energy. This takes a couple of days before it turns to the fat reserves we call carry - not the love handles round your waist, but the deeper lying deposits around your vital organs. These are converted to ketones which fuel your system. (Remember those smug folks on the Atkins diet proudly clutching their damp ketone sticks that they peed on to measure progress?) Eventually and long days into the process, the body will turn to consuming its protein reserves and last of all, muscle mass. The Russians have run state-sponsored fasting clinics for years and their early research, now taken up by western doctors and in particular, Dr Francoise Wilhelmi de Toledo (married to Raimund Wilhelmi), has shown the extraordinary effects that long term fasting can have on relieving both inflammation caused by arthritis and diabetes, a 21st-century scourge. The husband and wife team who head the medical team at Buchinger told me that after the war, 0.8 per cent of the world's population had diabetes. Now it's ten per cent in Europe, 20 per cent in the US and over 40 per cent in the Middle East.

Advertisement

Ten days, eight of which you are on 250 calories a day, is the minimum fasting programme you can take at Buchinger. What does 250 calories a day look like? Two very small bowls of thin vegetable soup, twice a day. Thank God that Hubert Hohler, the chef there for almost 20 years is a genius with flavour. There isn’t a joke about being a chef in a fasting clinic he hasn’t heard, but his vegetarian menu in the restaurant is sensational. You begin and end your fast here and those on the light diet programme can indulge properly. He is obsessed with minimising “food air miles” so everything save some exotic fruits and spices is grown locally and organically. He also advises Leipzig and Hoffenheim football teams, who are experimenting with ketogenic diets (lots of nuts and avocados). He proudly informs me they're the fittest squads in the Bundesliga.

I won’t pretend it’s not tough to start with. Anyone who has detoxed will know the caffeine deprivation headache that kicks in immediately. By day two you are knackered, angry and starting to plan your own great escape. But slowly and surely the hunger pangs fade, normal sleep patterns resume and your energy levels return and then accelerate. For the first two days I crawled round the daily four-mile walk you are advised to take (further and faster options available for the super fit, and a nice crawl for the less so) but on my last weekend, having consumed the calorific equivalent of one Big Mac over the previous week, I cantered round the faster walk, swam 30 lengths of their Olympic-size pool and finished with an hour in the gym.

Read next

Best camera phones for stunning holiday photos

These phones will up your Instagram game.

ByRobert Leedham

Let’s deal with the elephant in the smallest room. Tell any Brit that you are going to one of “those clinics” and you will get chortling energetic miming of tubes being pushed upwards. Yes, colonic cleansing is part of the process, something that only we soon-to-be-ex Europeans seem to find funny.

Advertisement

At a Mayr clinic you start each day with a small glass of Epsom salts and are told not to stray from your bathroom for an hour. At Buchinger you get one half litre of sodium salts on your first morning and are told not to move for twelve hours. The effects are the same, the timescale is different. The first is like emptying a fish pond over a week with a shrimping net, the second like chucking in a stick of dynamite. Twice a week you get a “tidying” enema, far less terrifying than a full-on colonic.

Your symptoms are eased with a dizzying range of optional treatments. Having had massages of all nations I no longer see the point of an exotic four thumb Mongolian blind massage on a bed of dried owl scrotums and opt instead for a daily tough sports massage alternating with a more relaxing Shiatsu. My highlights however were extraordinary sessions with Siegfried and Viola (many of their staff are named after heroic literary figures), the osteopath and beautician respectively. Both had magic hands, Siegfried using his to “realign” my body with a combination of delicate traditional and cranial manipulation. Viola wrapped me in an aloe vera mask, the sensual face massage being tempered by a blackhead blitz and a full inner ear Brazilian (ouch – respect, ladies). I topped up with two “legal blood doping” infusions of my own ozone pumped blood and a multi vitamin drip and finished with a traditional bloodletting – leaches for traditionalists are available on request.

After ten days I had lost 7kg (just over a stone) and three inches off my waist. My cholesterol level had dropped as had my cortisol levels (the stress hormone). I not only found my training sessions at home much easier – I looked forward to them. I’ve adopted many of Hohler’s tips (don’t cook in oil – add it afterwards) and, most important of all, the arthritis that has plagued my knees for a decade has receded to the point where I am pain free for the whole day. Will I go again? Absolutely. It's an amazing way to bump-start your regime and at the same time resolve long-term medical issues that can ruin your lifestyle.

The own staff are its best advertisement. When I said, “See you next week” to the slim young nurse who took my blood when I arrived, she replied, “No, I’m on holiday now for two weeks, fasting at home with my boyfriend, like we do every year.”